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Published: July 27th 2009
The Inca trail was awful but also AMAZING! I'm not an experienced hiker or even particularly fit and if you add in the altitude and a stupid cold caught the day before then i am surprised i even made it to the end without collapsing!
My group members were all really young fit people (i.e. 19 or PE teachers!) and they stormed through day 1 and i (almost) managed to keep up with them. Our tour guide Gladys said we were one of her fastest groups too. Day 1 is 11km over mixed terrain and completely do-able. They estimate it will take 5 hours and we did it in 3hrs 45mins, even with photo stops etc
Our tents were great and our first campsite was at the top of a hill overlooking the rest of the camps. Porters carry your belongings, set up your tent and get everything ready whilst the Chef prepares fantastic 3 course meals. Thank god they are there to hlp as there is no way i could have done it with that. the porters do this about 4 times a month and they actually run up and down hill with 25kgs on their back. they
deserve their tips and most of our group was pretty generous.
Unfotrunately it is pretty cold up there and it is their winter so i struggled to sleep and had to keep on adding extra layers to my thermals.
Day 2 is known to be the worst of the 4. It is mostly uphill and most of the 3000 steps felt like they were on this day! Dead Woman's pass is a killer and it took a while but it was great to reach the top with the rest of the group shouting me on. For once i wasn't last aswell! Poor Freddie was recovering from food poisoning and hadn't been eating much so didn't have the energy. Thankfully what goes up must come down and we had a good few hours of downhill steps afterwards, although they are pretty difficult to manouevre. they estimate the 12 km will take 7 hours for day 2 and we did it in 5hours. Another cold night at camp but i was better prepared this time.
Day 3 and i was expecting an easier day but it was straight into uphill again. my legs were like jelly and i couldn't
stop coughing but i just had to keep on going. the distance covered today was 16km and it's 9hours but we did it in 6.5hrs. the rain had been heavy overnight and apparently someone had slipped on a step and split their head open. As they are in the middle of nowhere 6 porters had to carry him to the next campsite which was 10km away so he could see a doctor. i can't imagine how scary that must have been and we didn't find out anything else so hope they are ok.
The scenery is just awesome up there but sometimes the fog completely takes over, we were hoping it would be different the next day when we got to Macchu Picchu. The last campsite has a bar and we all had a celebratory beer as there was only 6km left for the next morning.
Day 4 and a 4am wake up call to stand in line for the checkpoint to open at 5.30am. From there we practically ran the 6km on a narrow path to the sungate and for our first glimpse of Macchu Picchu. The sun wasn't up fully but it was such a relief
to finally see it!
Most of our group ran down to try and get tickets for the wayna picchu hike but no-one from the inca trail was successful in securing them as they only give 400 people the chance to do it and there were people who hiked from Aguas Calientes and who were on the first 3 buses up that got their first. It seems unfair when they are just visiting for the day and we have trekked 40km.
We took a lot of photos and had a guided tour of the "lost city" and then chilled out in the gorgeous sunshine which had appeared - we were so lucky considering the weather of the last few days. We all started to get hungry and took the bus down to Aguas Calientes for lunch and in preparation of our train journey back to Cusco where we were all desperate for bed and a hot shower!
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